Twitter expected to field takeover offers this week

Messaging service Twitter will start getting acquisition bids this week, according to people familiar with the matter as quoted by the Wall Street Journal. The social network’s shares were up 3.74 percent on the news in after-hours trading.

The US cloud computing company Salesforce is reportedly one of the most enthusiastic bidders, interested in the valuable data owned by the messenger.

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff sees Twitter as an “unpolished jewel” with untapped capacity for advertising and e-commerce. The social network’s data may be applied to Salesforce's core business in sales and marketing software.

Twitter’s price could run up to $20 billion, which is more than a third of Salesforce’s roughly $49 billion market value, the WSJ reports.

While Mr Benioff was working to convince Salesforce’s investors that the messenger was worth buying, the cloud company may face strong competition from Alphabet's Google and Walt Disney Co.

Twitter, struggling to grow its users and revenues, has been the subject of takeover rumors in recent weeks. The company’s quarterly results have been relatively weak so far.

The news comes shortly after one of Twitter’s investors Chris Sacca sold some of his shares in the company. Sacca said he was disappointed with the company’s CEO Jack Dorsey and advised selling Twitter.